Another Story
by Quistis Trepe1
Summary: Three different women, each with the same aim. To survive. By whatever means neccesary..


**A stroll through Hell.**

At first she thought it was rain, because it was so loud and so insistent. She wished it was rain, something that could wash away everything that had happened. She thought maybe God had done another Noah's arc and sent a great flood to drown the world and destroy everything, and she wished he had. Where was God now? Why had he let this happen? Why?! This was an abomination of life, of everything she believed in. They were dead! Should she dig them a grave, will they leave then? Is that why they are the living dead, if they have a place to be at peace will they stop being the living dead and just die.

Maybe this was the end of the world now. The Apocalypse, if it was, then it was as horrible and terrible as she would've imagined. No it was even worse than her imaginations. But if this was the Apocalypse then why wasn't she dead! Everyone else was... Maybe God got sick of this planet and left to go and find another Universe to play God in, leaving all the dead to fall back onto Earth. From the looks of it, even Satan was sick of ruling in hell and so threw all his dead prisoners back onto earth. They were zombies, flesh eating, disgusting, rotting, skeletal beasts that trudged around, drunkenly, looking for food, mindless and pitiful.

Her name was Jane.

Plain Jane.

Nothing special.

5"5 with shoulder length chestnut hair, leaf-brown eyes, and pale skin and slightly aquiline features. She wouldn't stand out in a crowd. She wasn't ugly but she didn't consider herself to be exceptionally pretty. Actually, she always thought of herself as being boring looking.

Nothing special.

Maybe she was special; after all, she was the only person she had seen now for a day; the only person who was still a person, she meant. She had seen hundreds of zombies. Or maybe she had died in real life and she had been such a sinner in life that this was her hell. It felt like it. She'd do anything now to have righted all the wrongs she had committed. She had prayed a lot, but it seemed like God just wasn't listening, or that he just didn't care.

Jane got up from the pile of crates she had used as a nest; she had slept uncomfortably there for a few hours. It was in the back corner of a smelly, dusty old warehouse that had been sporadically used for storage, when people did actually store things, that is. Now all they did was eat each other. The air inside was stale and fusty, the 'rain' she had heard was the dripping of a leaky pipe a few feet away. The warehouse was lofty and the floor was cluttered with all sorts of rubbish and junk, she was on a little raised mound of crates and had a view of the whole warehouse, in the dim evening light she couldn't see very well, but she saw that nothing moved, which was a good sign.

The rusty shutters leading into the warehouse were sealed tightly shut and barricaded with junk. She had smashed a small square window and wriggled in a few hours earlier and this was the safest place she had found. The streets were a death maze filled with zombies and only enclosed, isolated buildings like this seemed to be secure. The little window she had entered by was just above the crates she lay on. She decided she'd need to leave now again. This was the city centre but she could make it to the city outskirts in a few hours of covert travelling and leave the city!

What a dream, to leave this hell! She hoped that outside the city wasn't in the same state as the city but she didn't dwell on the subject. She wanted to be hopeful. She stretched her weary and aching limbs and realised that the dripping of the leaky pipe had stopped and there was another dripping from the opposite corner of the warehouse. She didn't really take great notice and stood up, the crates shook a little under the strain of movement and she cautiously turned around and made her way to the window and the grey light shining through when she heard a wet pant and the light, padded clip of feet racing towards her.

"Rex!" Jane squealed with delight as the black and russet-brown Doberman raced towards her, it's long, fleshy tongue dangling hungrily from its open mouth. Rex was her next-door neighbour's dog and she wondered how it had gotten here, this far from home. It must have followed her; she mused delightedly and knelt down with her arms out-held as if to catch it in a warm embrace, a friend! Then she caught the red-glowing preternatural gleam of its beady eyes. Then she heard its choking whine and realised how gaunt it looked. Then she saw how most of its hair was gone, rotted away, and blood red corded muscles was all she could see, she saw how its mouth was splashed in blood and how its back legs was nothing but putrefied muscle and bone. Then she realised it, too, was a zombie, and she realised she was about to give it a hug.

With a shriek she dived headfirst off the mountain of crates as Rex soared up to meet her. Its serrated claws scraped her back as it flew through the air, forcing a long, pained moan to burst from her mouth. It landed on the mountain of crates with eerie expertise, just as Jane landed, clumsily, elbow first on one of the bare cold-concrete patches of the warehouse floor. Her elbow stung and salty tears rolled from her eyes freely, slowly she turned on her back as Rex launched himself from the crates, propelling right into her chest. They both skidded along the ground for a few seconds; the gaping scrapes on Jane's back were now beating with raw hurt. Rex got back onto his skeletal paws and snapped its fang lined maw at Jane's neck.

Sheer terror fuelled her to roll out of its reach just in time. As if being controlled by adrenaline she was flung to her feet and realised she had twisted her ankle. She limped as fast as she could with the unholy beast racing behind her. She twisted and turned through the maze of piles of crates and other useless junk in the warehouse and roughly turned a sharp corner into a dead end, filled with planks of wood and plastic chairs and paint cans. Then she saw it, a little cloudy ray of light poking through a ground-level window. The window was already smashed, it had been previously been barred. She surmised that Rex had come in via this route and the thought that the behemoth could be that powerful, to snap steel bars, sent icy shivers snaking vehemently up her spine.

For the second time, she lunged head first, now through the window, this time her belly was scratched by remaining pieces of glass littering the ground. Only half of her body got through but she dragged herself out into a dank, dimly lit back ally. There was a high brick wall to her right, and there was another ally straight ahead that led into the main street where she could hear slow but sure steps coming towards her. She did not want to witness the owner of the weird footsteps. To her left was a mesh gate, albeit a climbable mesh gate. It was jagged at the top but she could easily manoeuvre herself over that.

She had done gymnastics for three years, forced to do gymnastics actually, and now she reaped the benefits she guessed. She was knocked onto her back by a mass of cadaverous dog that shot out of the window behind her. This time she wasn't so slow to get back to her feet. With blinding tears she jumped at the mesh gate and it wobbled dangerously. Rex was right behind her and it too leapt at the mesh. Then she realised, it wasn't a secure gate, but a piece of mesh jammed between the ally walls, probably to barricade out zombies. The mesh bent with a metallic whine, then swung dangerously. She was knocked off the mesh as it screeched into a lateral position in the ally. She landed on the other side and had narrowly dodged the jagged edges of the mesh. Rex still sat on the mesh, thinking of nothing buts its delicious quarry. It raced to the edge of the mesh and then Jane saw her chance!

She rolled under the mesh and grabbed the bottom of it, then swung it back into its original position. With all the luck in the world Rex was positioned at the top when she did so, and the razor-edge end of the mesh drove itself deep into Rex's underbelly.

* * *

Anna Green wandered through the verdant pathway, her handgun dangling at her side tentatively. Flicking her silky pale light-coloured locks behind her ear she walked, gingerly, onwards. This was the back pathway into Colchester Street. She lived in Colchester Street but was usually at work in the outskirts of the city and she didn't know the inner city off by heart but she knew enough. She knew that this park was a major shortcut, even though it was infested with zombies. She already cut down a wave of zombies but this part of the wood was quiet. The trees whistled blithely in the wind, untroubled by the recent happenings.

Anna wished she could've been as carefree or as ignorant as the trees, but how hard she tried she couldn't ignore what was happening; Racoon City had been enveloped in a virus. A virus that can...well she didn't want to go into it scientifically so she'll just put into laymen's terms.

A virus that turns people into zombies.

As simple as that, the living dead.

Mindless, forever hungry, with the very rudiments of basic needs, in fact only one real need. The need to eat. She herself had supervised the creating of the virus but she never, in her most twisted dreams would've wanted this to happen. By this time she thought she'd be lying beside her outdoor pool in her new house in the tropics somewhere, sipping wine and relaxing with her husband and kids. Her husband and kids were dead now. She had killed them herself, with the very gun she held in her hand. They weren't alive when she shot them, each one in the forehead. They were alive-dead if you can understand the concept and it stung her to see their mindless, horribly different and yet sickeningly the same bodies shuffling around looking for flesh to eat. She finished all three of them off. Then she held the warm gun to her head but she was unable to pull the trigger.

The virus wasn't supposed to turn people into zombies; it was supposed to reverse the aging process. If it did so, she would've been a billionaire (and so would've been able to afford the house in the tropics dream) but now she had a couple of useless dollars in her jacket pocket, couple of handgun clips, a grenade and the disk. She was a coward, running again, just like she left Jeremy behind the doors, just like she shot her family and just like she couldn't shoot herself. She tried to make excuses to herself; "I will live for them! They would want me to live a long happy life."

But truthfully, what she wanted was to die because she was nothing without them and hell wouldn't be as bad as what she had already witnessed over the past couple of hours and she was just too scared to pull the trigger, and then she had started scratching her pale arm till it bleed. Why had she lived!? Why had everyone else succumbed to the brain deteriorating, repugnant virus except for her? Then she realised, morbidly, that she envied those infected with the virus. It was over for them.

Now she had the single, tiny little disk with all the virus research imbedded in it. She was going to leave Racoon City via the subway; she'd walk if she had to. She guessed no transport would be operable. She still had a chance at life; she'd take it with all the force she had left. And the clever handgun she had strapped to her shoulder.

Ashton and Co. were the number two pharmaceutical company on earth, after Umbrella Corporation of course (the corporation that had started the virus, the corporation that she had worked, so dedicatedly, to in the last few years).

She was going to sell the virus off to them. She'd be a billionaire; she could buy a nice mansion in the hills with a swimming pool, throw great balls and feasts and maybe even pay for brain surgery to see if someone can wipe these blood-drenched memories from her head, for she knew now, that the monstrosities that she had witnessed that day would live with her forever.

* * *

Yu Xue, martial arts expert, top agent of HORNET, deadly with a gun and without one. Tantalisingly beautiful with a spicy attitude and no remorse whatsoever made her the ultimate assassin.

1 .... 2 ..... 3 ...

She carved the numbers into her little leather pouch; five top scientists had escaped the Umbrella Facility three hours ago. Edward Innech, Elizabeth Eckford, Anna Green, Jason McCormack and Jeremy Kay, all had fled and mysteriously all had survived the virus outbreak and Yu knew not how but she didn't care, it meant nothing to her, just more people to kill. HORNET was paying her to track down all the survivors and kill them all, no one must survive, they had explained to her. She never thought it would be like this; the living dead walking the streets!

She was a tough woman and that wasn't enough to stop her, someone once told her she was as emotionless as a zombie. Her inky black eyes seemed to be drained of any compassion at all, but then again, what kind of assassin would she be if she was compassionate?

She didn't know what HORNET would gain from these assassinations; HORNET was probably being paid by Umbrella. With no survivors no one would be able to vouch for what really happened here. If the public found out what happened Umbrella would be destroyed. Umbrella was the kind of corporation that had been doing shady business since it was just a stall in a street and she knew whenever Umbrella was involved in any of her assignments, to always examine the situation thrice.

Jeremy Kay, one of the scientists on her list, was killed by one of his fellow scientists, so Yu ticked him off her little register. She was in the shadows of the room at the time and she saw what happened, the female scientist, Anna Green or Elizabeth Eckford (Yu couldn't be sure, they are all six figure sums to her anyway) locked the doors behind her and left Jeremy in the room with some great beast. Yu couldn't see the beast to make sure there definitely was one but the screams and noises of muscles and bones snapping with wet cracks was enough evidence.

1

She had shot Jason McCormack in the back of the neck from a rooftop, it wasn't the environment where she'd actually need to be covert in her operations but luckily she was sitting on the rooftop getting a scope on the City when he sauntered along the street below, carrying a crowbar as some meagre attempt at defence. Easy shot.

2

One of the female scientists was hiding in a heavily cordoned coffee shop. She was sitting under a table, curled up in a little ball. She had committed suicide anyway so it was just another gallon of blood that Yu, conveniently, needn't had to spill.

3

In the top floor of the Racoon City Newspaper office block she had found Edward Innech, rummaging through piles of paper, flustered and angry, he seemed to be murmuring to himself. He had a fully loaded magnum sitting idly by his side. She guessed that there was potential danger here but she walked right in and shot at him anyway. She underestimated him and he had sprung, with outstanding agility, out of the way, reaching for his magnum as he went. He rose up in front of a grimy window, and Yu shot him in the shoulder. He went through the window, down a couple of stories and into a pit of zombies. If he wasn't dead when he went through the window, he was dead now.

4.

Four. Four people she had killed in less than seven hours. One more was left, there were eight pictures stored on her digital camera. Two pictures for each corpse, just as back-up proof that she did carry out the murders. One woman was left; she guessed it was Anna Green as the other woman had ginger hair and Elizabeth Eckford was described thus in the rushed briefing Yu was given earlier.

She was weary now, this place stank of death and all she wanted to do was get out. One more kill and she was free. She rested for awhile on a raised roof-top on Colchester Street, in another few minutes she'll hunt down the last target, the one thing stopping her from leaving this hell-hole.

* * *

Anna slipped stealthily down Colchester Street. The journey through the park had been swift and uneventful. Her house was just a few steps away. There were a few zombies dragging themselves along the ground, worming their way towards her, but the virus was so developed in their bodies that they were totally atrophied, and they couldn't move very fast. Her door was dangling from its hinges; she walked in and galloped straight up the staircase into her son's room. She brushed her hand along the cracked paint on the staircase walls. It was a little habit she had, a homely habit. It made her sick to think she'd never do it again. She burst into tears as soon as she entered her son's room, seeing all his stupid posters, his desk, his rock CD's, even his bed. His body, along with his sister's and father's all lay downstairs where she had disposed of them earlier.

"Stop being so weak!" she screamed to herself.

"Weak! Cowardly!" she screeched, her voice ripping through her throat in great ululation. She crawled along the ground to her son's computer. It was already switched on and it was warm, she clicked the icon which connected onto the internet and came to the Umbrella E-Mailing service. She clicked on her name, and as warm tears streamed from her eyes, she began composing a letter to an old associate.

* * *

Jane was running now, there was a spray of bullets that cut into the wall behind her. Someone was shooting at her! Can zombies use guns?! She was in Colchester Street now. After she had been attacked by the zombified Rex and had skewered it on the mesh fence, she had ran away and left it dangling on the jagged tips of the mesh. It was still alive (or alive-dead) when she left, she knew it was cruel and sadistic but she wanted it to feel pain, burning pain, before it died. However she wondered bleakly even if it could feel pain. She had made her way here by climbing over walls and low roofs but had once stumbled a little and her body slid into an ally filled to the brim with zombies. She grabbed the wall with her arms but her legs drooped into the ally. Moaning, the zombies all lunged at her legs and grappled onto her and tried to pull her down into them so they could feast upon her. So she would become one of them! Swinging precariously she managed to flip herself back up onto the wall and she dashed away, slipped, and landed back on her elbow in the middle of Colchester Street. Then someone started firing bullets at her so she started running, she was still running now and she could see the country back road, in the distance and dim light, leading out into the scenic routes of the city where she could walk to the next town.

Was this it? Could she escape now, or wouldn't she able to? Would she be able to just walk out of the city and leave her whole life behind her? She had no life anymore; it was destroyed with all the other lives in the City. Just because she was still living didn't mean she had suffered any less. The bullet noises were loud and scary and scorched her ears and she could feel their searing heat, but this just propelled her onwards. She couldn't see where the bullets were coming from. Maybe someone had mistaken her for a zombie and maybe they would save her if she just went back to talk to them.

No, she would never go back.

* * *

Yu Xue swung from the slanted roof and came towards the cloudy window with faint blue light radiating from it, at full speed. She kicked the window with one hefty boot and it smashed. Anna Green was sitting at a computer screen; she glanced at Yu tersely for a second before she darted out of the small room and down the stairs, running at top speed and making quite a racket. Yu could tell she was scared and Anna wasn't the most graceful of people either, Yu perceived. Yu had her now, Anna would never get away. Yu first had heard someone screaming aloud; "Coward" and so followed the voice. Then she saw a teenage girl running down the street and impetuously mistook her for Anna and fired at her. Then, she caught sight of Anna through this window from her rooftop position. Now Yu stalked past the computer Anna was previously sitting at, and as she did so she noticed the e-mail that Anna was composing. It had already been sent and Yu couldn't help but see the mentioning of a 'fair seven figure sum' and something about handing over research data from the Umbrella Labs to a man named Alistair Leone in Branson, a small town in Ohio. A dark plan was forming in Yu's mind and a cat-like grin spread across her delicate face, then she raced after Anna.

* * *

Anna was running now. She saw the HORNET logo on that woman's diaphanous top, she must be an assassin. Anna raced down the stairs and even though she wouldn't have seen the dead bodies of her family anyway, she still closed her eyes as she ran past the door to the living room. She found it strange that even though the human population in the city was dwindling to a minimum, they still fought amongst themselves. She leaped down the couple of steps leading to her front, dilapidated, door and turned suddenly, stumbling a little and fired a shot from her handgun. She was met with a boot to the face as the HORNET agent bolted from the door with her leg held taut in a flying kick.

Anna collapsed to the ground, her nose was broken, she felt the sharp, garish pain and even though everything danced around her in a blurry bulk of confusion she still managed to stand up, regain her balance and face her assailant. The woman was obviously Asian and skinny with delicate porcelain like characteristics. The assassin hissed and kicked again at Anna. This time Anna dodged and hopped over the fence around her little flower-laden garden (which still looked lovely even in the dire situation, some things never change). The assassin pulled the trigger on some gruesome weapon and several bullets tore through Anna's body.

* * *

Jane's elbow and shoulder on her right side were bleeding badly, as well as the lashes on her back caused from Rex's fatal claws. On one occasion whilst she had been journeying across the city, a tall zombie had lashed out at her from behind a wall, as if it had been hiding, waiting for her to run past. It had dug its yellow, cavity-ridden teeth into her soft shoulder and tore a chunk right out of it. Its lank, greasy hair stroked her face and its nauseating stench nearly made her vomit on the spot.

She screeched and kicked the monster away; it stumbled and immediately came at her again. She eluded it and ran down the street. Her elbow was bleeding from her two falls and the pain was so white hot and intense that she guessed it was too much for her body to take because she couldn't feel anything anymore. She was just numb. Now she was coming to the scenic route out of the city when she realised there was a parked jeep waiting at the entrance to the scenic route.

Two heavily armoured soldiers stood there with guns, glinting in the moonlight, pointing ominously towards her.

"Please, help me!" she shrieked before she could stop herself. She was shocked by the sound of her own voice; she hadn't heard it in what seemed like ages. As she reached them she threw herself down at their feet as if they could somehow magically transport her far from the wretched place.

The two soldiers glanced at each other then one said with a sneer; "Will you kill 'er or will I?"

The second soldier seemed to chuckle mirthlessly and said; "Well I killed the last one, you can have this one."

* * *

Anna was finding it hard to breathe. There were gushing, warm bullet wounds on her chest and shoulders. She didn't know if she was walking now, standing, crawling ... lying. Everything was shadowy, everything was becoming dark. Her eyes were stinging with pain or tears, she couldn't be sure. Her body was limp and she coughed and sputtered and a spray of crimson blood erupted from her cracked lips. Her lungs were bleeding, too late, she was going to die. She deserved it she guessed, and with that, she accepted her fate and knew that there was no turning back from what she had done. She felt bad that she'd already had to endure this hell and now would have to journey onto the next but hoped that even the greatest of sins could be forgiven. She had created a virus that turned innocent people into zombies ... and she referred to **them** as monsters?

As everything around her turned from grey to black she caught sight of movement just a few feet away from her. Two soldiers and a teenage girl, the two soldiers were talking, the girl was on her knees, crying. One soldier raised a gun to the girl's head. Anna suddenly realised who the girl was. She couldn't remember her name but knew that she had been friendly with her daughter, in the past. The two soldiers were trying to kill the girl!

No! Anna wasn't to die yet. She didn't know what had taken over her but everything became bright and glaring. Her hand dropped to her pocket with the few dollars in it, the disk with all the virus data on it and ... and the grenade!

She knew what she had to do. Anna would die now anyway, she guessed dying wouldn't be that bad. She could forget everything then, couldn't she? She lifted the grenade and unconsciously bit off the latch. It was as if she was a mindless zombie, she felt like she was a ghost watching herself do this. With one powerful arm she lobbed the ready grenade just behind where the two soldiers and her daughter's friend stood. Her daughter's life was gone, but maybe this girl would have a chance. There was a few seconds of pure, serene silence then a massive fiery explosion. Everything went black and before she died, Anna saw an image of her family waiting for her.

* * *

Jane didn't know what had happened but her whole body was aching. She had landed on her back when the world had seemed to shake her off the ground. The jeep was on fire and was burning quickly and strange smells of rubber and other materials burning floated up her nose. Once she shook her sight back into place she sat up. Everything was dim and dull and she saw the burnt ruby sun disappearing behind the ebony black hills ahead of her. The two soldiers were dead. One body was smouldering and lying quite near her, the other, she couldn't see. The pulsing heat from the burning jeep was overwhelming. She guessed the soldiers were trying to quarantine the city and that's why they wanted her dead.

Suddenly she realised, she had a clear path out of the city. Leaping from the ground she darted into the scenic lane that led to the next city. She didn't care about the pain, she nearly laughed to herself. All the ugliness and horror was behind her, she was free. She tried not to think of family and friends, not now. The trees with purplish buds all around her were so inviting, so beautiful, so ... safe! Running along she realised nothing was going to follow her here or jump out at her and devour her. She slowed and breathed steadily. She wasn't plain Jane anymore. Someone had saved her; God had smiled upon her that day and had miraculously saved her. Maybe this was Noah's Arc, and she had been saved. For the first time in a long while she felt happy.

And for the first time in a long while, she felt hopeful.

* * *

_(Ten days later, in Branson, Ohio) _

The small town was bustling early in the morning. Shops had just opened and the welcoming warmth and smells of the bakery drifted down the street. Cars zoomed down the road and the sun was beaming down all over the town. It was a good day, and it was to get even better for Yu Xue. Ten days ago she had escaped from Racoon City, had assassinated five targets, and had been paid ample amounts of money for her brutal deeds. Her last target, Anna Green, was a crafty one, but Yu was even craftier. Anna had, to her esteem, rescued a vulnerable teenage girl before she died and Yu respected her for that. Anna had been sacrificed to give that girl a chance at life.

Yu had been given sleeping pills by the HORNET medic and psycho-analyst because she was warned that she would have haunting nightmares of what she had seen in the dead City. The nightmares would supposedly ruin her sleep, maybe for good, but Yu hadn't had a bad sleep since. Some people thought this was monstrous, that she hadn't been mentally or emotionally affected by the bereavement and devastation she witnessed in Racoon City but Yu didn't care. She was a tough woman and that wasn't enough to stop her, someone once told her she was as emotionless as a zombie and she liked it like this, she found it as a fine advantage. Emotion was for weaklings and that, she was not.

She walked past the tempting bakery, past a leather-smelling shoe-shop and a busy hotdog vendor to a dainty little coffee shop with a terrace with pretty wooden chairs and tables adorning it. A tall, gaunt man sat on one these chair, reading the local newspaper with an untouched latté sitting on the table in front of him. He was pale and resembled a spectre in some respect.

"Alistair Leone?" Yu Xue addressed him swiftly.

He looked up from his paper and his face flashed with confusion; "Where is Anna?"

"Anna ... couldn't make it, I am her representative. My name is Julia, I have a lot of information you seek right here," Yu said with a salacious smile, waving the disk with all the Umbrella Virus research detailed in it. She had taken the disk from Anna Green's distorted corpse when she had died in Racoon City ten days ago.

The man's confused demeanour changed to a welcoming yet roguish smile, he pushed a seat aside; "Please, sit."  
Yu Xue may not have had a lot of emotions other than avarice, but all she needed was money. She supposed she loved money, it was everything to her. Most people would think this was heartless and pathetic, and it was, but then again, she wasn't most people, and most people weren't rich.

"Is this payment acceptable to you, I will pay anything," Alistair said, swallowing hard, he was desperate. He scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it towards Yu.

She glanced quickly at the seven-figure sum and looked back at him, trying so hard to feign a scowl under all her elation; "I expected a little higher than that," she said with an eloquent grin.

* * *

_Fin_


End file.
